Beyond the law – ethics

As we learned from the beginning of the semester, the law seeks to codify rules of conduct that is allowed or permissible in society. In other words, the law records the rules of behavior that some social group says it will tolerate or not tolerate. That code, or list of rules is backed by political authority, meaning, a person found guilty of violating the rules will then be subject to some kind of penalty imposed by society. Penalties range from censure to loss of privileges (a license is revoked) to fines, imprisonment or even death.

The law defines what society regards as allowable behavior.

Beyond the law are ethics – questions of what is right or wrong. In the closing scenes of Absence of Malice, deputy U.S. Attorney General Wells (played by Wilford Brimley) summarizes some of what has been going on during the course of the movie with these words: “It ain’t legal, and worse than that … it ain’t right.” Those words underscore the distinction between what is legal and what is ethical.

In our society, ethics is the province of philosophers, theologians and professional organizations. Thus lawyers have a set of standards governing what they call "professional" or "ethical" behavior above and beyond the law. Similarly, the American Medical Assn. publishes a book-length Code of Medical Ethics.

The files contained in this Web site are provided for the benefit of students in MCOM 3320, Mass Communications Law, within the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. These files include a general outilne (without fine detail) of all course content as well as links to helpful resources. All content is the intellectual property of Randy Reddick and Texas Tech University.